If you have a Dropbox account and enough space, put the full backups of both drives in a shared folder and send me an invite (same user name). I may be able to figure out something, and it would be a good way to get me back into the programming mode. Right now I'm in "watch TV & drink beer" mode.

I don't know that WinMFS can't do it from first hand experience, but someone else said that it couldn't in a recent thread and your experience seems to confirm it. It may even have worked until 11.0k was released with support for 2TB drives.

The files at 1TB and 250G are too big for me to upload with the limited upload pipe I have, I'm afraid. It would take me over a week to upload just the 1 TB one. But I have started to work with jmbach, and he may have an idea on how to combine two drives into one on an S3.

For those unaware, the program will flag bad sectors/data as it reads, but thankfully does not abort.

What does happen, however, is that an error window pops up and needs to be acknowledged before the the backup continues, which means someone has to keep an eye on things while the backup is running, or it will wait forever if there's an error.

Perhaps the next version could have an option to just continue on errors, and maybe generate an error log text file on the destination device for fully unattended long operation.

For those unaware, the program will flag bad sectors/data as it reads, but thankfully does not abort.

What does happen, however, is that an error window pops up and needs to be acknowledged before the the backup continues, which means someone has to keep an eye on things while the backup is running, or it will wait forever if there's an error.

Perhaps the next version could have an option to just continue on errors, and maybe generate an error log text file on the destination device for fully unattended long operation.

It used to abort on errors during backup, so that's a small improvement.

I'll probably add something like that to the next version, along with a subroutine to break down the 2MB blocks it uses now into 512 byte sector reads in case of errors. The initial goal was just to get it working at all with healthy drives.

It used to abort on errors during backup, so that's a small improvement.

I'll probably add something like that to the next version, along with a subroutine to break down the 2MB blocks it uses now into 512 byte sector reads in case of errors. The initial goal was just to get it working at all with healthy drives.

Don't mistake me - I am VERY grateful for the program, and having to manually continue on errors is a small price to pay. I just wanted to make people aware that if they're doing a long operation, they should look in on it time to time just in case.

This is the only program I was able to find running in Windows that can duplicate a TiVo drive byte for byte, and the fact it continues after an error is fantastic. It allowed me to refresh the six year old drives in my S3 that were starting to have issues.

It used to abort on errors during backup, so that's a small improvement.

I'll probably add something like that to the next version, along with a subroutine to break down the 2MB blocks it uses now into 512 byte sector reads in case of errors. The initial goal was just to get it working at all with healthy drives.

I didn't take your other post as criticism at all. Keep the suggestions coming. I suffer from "can't see the forest for the trees" more than most programmers and it took a LOT of input from jmbach, retiredqwest and others to get it this far.

I am a New user and it wont let me PM till I get 10 post But I am interested

[quote=nooneuknow;9692349]I hope this doesn't come across in the wrong way. I'm just trying to help the cause of the thread, by providing a source for some 2TB drives:

I just received a shipment of six WD20EADS-00S2B0 HARCHV2AA 2TB Western Digital hard drives, as replacements for some degraded/defective ones I sent back.

I'm curious how the drives have the same model number as the Caviar Green drives I sent back, but, instead have a black/white label, with no mention of Green, or Caviar (although the power & 32MB cache specs are the same), and the label doesn't specify the LBA of the drives (which I expect from AF drives, but EADS drives never were)...

To the point: I really don't need these drives for anything, since before I RMA'd the originals, I bought a case of WD20EURS drives to use for my TiVos, with a couple extra to shelf as spares.

Anyway, I have six 2TB WD20EADS drives (and more to come), which are still factory sealed, and this seemed like an appropriate place to say I'd be willing to part with them for a fair price, either to help the project, or help those looking to expand their capacity.

PM me with any reasonable offer(s). If I'm out of line, I'll retract this post.[

I cant PM because I don't have 10 posts but I am interested in a drive or 2 if the price is right Can I email you?

This program sounds like just what I need to restore a TiVo Premiere Elite XL4 TCD758250 that I just got which has a Parental Control password that I need to clear. TiVo support has been unable to reset it, but I think the problem is that it is not configured for the internet and of course I can change the settings without the Parental Control password.

Does anyone have the small backup from DvrBARS for this TiVo that I could download? Or is there any other way to do this without having a good drive?

I just received a shipment of six WD20EADS-00S2B0 HARCHV2AA 2TB Western Digital hard drives, as replacements for some degraded/defective ones I sent back (and more to come), which are still factory sealed, and I'd be willing to part with them for a fair price, either to help the project, or help those looking to expand their capacity. PM me with any reasonable offer(s).

I cant PM because I don't have 10 posts but I am interested in a drive or 2 if the price is right Can I email you?

This program sounds like just what I need to restore a TiVo Premiere Elite XL4 TCD758250 that I just got which has a Parental Control password that I need to clear. TiVo support has been unable to reset it, but I think the problem is that it is not configured for the internet and of course I can change the settings without the Parental Control password.

Does anyone have the small backup from DvrBARS for this TiVo that I could download? Or is there any other way to do this without having a good drive?

Any help would be great!

Thanks,
Rich

I will send you a PM link to the image, but if you use it on your existing drive it will basically wipe out everything on it. If you're willing to go that far I would also recommend using the Full Restore option so that it wipes every sector that isn't being written with actual data. It will take a LOT longer, but probably worth it in this case.

It's an interesting question. I will play around with parental controls on my XL this weekend and see if I can figure out where it's located. I need to look at 20.3.1 anyway, and if it's an easy fix I can add another option to the program to just wipe the password. If you can hold off a few more days don't do anything drastic yet.

Edit: Forget the Full Restore stuff. It slipped my feeble minf that you would have to do a full C&DE anyway with an image from another TiVo.

Last edited by ggieseke : 06-14-2013 at 08:47 AM.
Reason: Not enough coffee

The full restore still might be a good idea. If the password is located in an area that is usually null, without a complete restore it might remain and if the Tivo just checks to see if it is not null to activate parental controls, it will still be active.

__________________
"Delay is preferable to error" - Thomas Jefferson
"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants" - Sir Isaac Newton

O.k. just one last post to close the loop on my prior posts, thank you all and confirm you were completely correct in the comcast cable card pairing problem diagnosis.

Sadly I simply could not get comcast to fix remotely and they insisted on a truck roll. Appointment was a week wait. I called them several more times with "leads" while waiting but nothing ever came of these calls. Finally appt day came. At noon I get a call from tech saying, "those cards from the service center don't work, you need special tivo compatible ones and new ones that haven't been used before...I don't have them now. Will get tonight or tomorrow. " He gives me his personal cell number. Day later he says he has and will come out next day. Next day, he never shows. I text him several times. he replies to none of these. Doesn't tell me he's not coming or anything. Call Comcast and they say, sorry, we can't tell you when we can get you a tech - can you call back in a couple hours to try again (at 1:00 a.m.) ? I hung up. (Caveat, we did have a major storm with possible tornados and major outages so I understand this a bit.) 2 things I did next. 1 - I had opted in to customer sat survey post call. I won't describe my ratings (PG forum I think), but at the end they asked if I wanted to be called back about my problem. I said yes and detailed all the above, very nicely and said in an exasperated tone that I'd really like to get this fixed. 2 - I filed an FCC complaint against comcast here saying I suspected they were running afoul of cable card regs: https://esupport.fcc.gov/ccmsforms/f...orm_type=2000E

It really wasn't a bad form at all.
Next day, came home and voila, everything was working. You KNEW they could fix it remotely, I knew they could too. ARGGGH. !@$!#%!#%!@#%
Anyway, thank you all so much once again. Great Forum! Great people!

Thanks for helping me out with the image - glad you had it! It is fine for me to wipe out the drive as I bought it from someone and don't need anything on it. I think the problem and reason TiVo support couldn't get it done is that the unit is not connecting to TiVo and I can't configure the network without the parent controls password. They said to leave the unit on so they could send something to it overnight, but I am sure this didn't work because the network is not setup properly.

I probably won't get to try this out until after the weekend, but I will let you know how it goes.

I just redid my Premiere drive, from the well-used image here. Did all the updates, got the cable-card recognized again, clear and delete and got my lineups all set.
When I then pulled the drive from the Premiere to make a backup in DvrBARS, the PC can't see the drive, whether it's via USB or SATA connection.
What could I be doing wrong?

I just redid my Premiere drive, from the well-used image here. Did all the updates, got the cable-card recognized again, clear and delete and got my lineups all set.
When I then pulled the drive from the Premiere to make a backup in DvrBARS, the PC can't see the drive, whether it's via USB or SATA connection.
What could I be doing wrong?

Are you using administrator login? Do not let your system try to read the drive, it can't, only the software such as DVRBars, WinMFS, etc. (with administrator rights).

Full is perfect if you have a drive that's straight from the factory because most of the drive is all zeroes. A Full backup "xeroxes" the entire drive, but due to the way dynamic VHD files work you'll get a byte-for-byte copy of the entire drive in a relatively small file. For Premieres that's usually about 2.5GB and you can zip it down even further.

Modified Full backups selectively copy all of the sectors that are in use, including your recordings. You'll need a lot of disk space if you have a lot of recordings.

Truncated backups are like Modified backups, but your recordings are excluded. The final backup file will be about the same size as a Full backup of a factory drive that has never been booted, especially if you exclude the alternate Root partition (see the Settings screen).....

If I did a FULL backup of a 1tb drive that has absolutely NO recordings and is as fresh an install as possible (the only thing I did was a clear and delete and grabbed my TV Guide data), DvrBARS says that the FULL backup is 931 GB!! I thought I read it would be as little as 2-3GB.

What am I missing? I don't have enough hard drive space for a 931GB backup.
Is that just a theoretical number that will change once the backup starts?

What am I missing? I don't have enough hard drive space for a 931GB backup.
Is that just a theoretical number that will change once the backup starts?

How do you create a drive that's "straight from the factory".....

For a Premiere, you can probably assume about 2GB for a truncated backup. A modified full backup would take that much space plus the size of any recordings (whatever that is).

Full backups work fine on a drive that just came straight from the factory because 99% of it is all zeroes and it compresses well. You don't "create" it, you buy a brand-new TiVo and remove the drive before you even plug it in. In that case it will be almost identical to a truncated backup. Once the drive has seen any real use, a full backup could be larger than the actual drive size.

A C&DE does not overwrite the unused parts of the drive with all zeroes. With a used drive, a truncated or modified full backup is what you want.

You can shrink it a bit further by going into Settings and choosing not to back up the alternate OS partition.

For a Premiere, you can probably assume about 2GB for a truncated backup. A modified full backup would take that much space plus the size of any recordings (whatever that is).

Full backups work fine on a drive that just came straight from the factory because 99% of it is all zeroes and it compresses well. You don't "create" it, you buy a brand-new TiVo and remove the drive before you even plug it in. In that case it will be almost identical to a truncated backup. Once the drive has seen any real use, a full backup could be larger than the actual drive size.

A C&DE does not overwrite the unused parts of the drive with all zeroes. With a used drive, a truncated or modified full backup is what you want.

You can shrink it a bit further by going into Settings and choosing not to back up the alternate OS partition.

OK, thanks. I did a truncated, and it appeared on my PC drive as 7GB. No recordings - just a post-Tivo download of my cable companies info and guide data. I assume the smart thing to do after doing the truncated backup is then "restore" it to the drive it came from, just to make sure it worked?

7GB sounds screwy to me, but if it completed a truncated backup you were backing up a TiVo drive and the file systems were intact. I've never seen one go over about 2.5GB.

If you really want to test the image, use the Full Restore method. It will take forever because it writes zeroes to all the sectors on the drive that it didn't actually back up. Alternatively, you could do a quick restore to a different drive.

7GB sounds screwy to me, but if it completed a truncated backup you were backing up a TiVo drive and the file systems were intact. I've never seen one go over about 2.5GB.

If you really want to test the image, use the Full Restore method. It will take forever because it writes zeroes to all the sectors on the drive that it didn't actually back up. Alternatively, you could do a quick restore to a different drive.

That must have been one heck of a guide data download.

yeah, I thought the same thing. 600 channels at two weeks listings = 5gb? I wouldn't know. I used the Premiere image from here to start (3.5gb), updated the Tivo software, did a clear & delete, and then downloaded the listing. End result = 7gb.

But.....

I just ran Truncated now, a second time, and got a file that was 2.8gb (?) - which included partitions 1-9 and partition 14. Does that make any sense?

Sure, you can do a quick restore to the same drive but it won't prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that your backup is 100% reliable. In quick restore mode it only writes the sectors that it backed up and leaves the rest of the drive alone. If it did miss something critical (which I have never seen it do) you wouldn't know the difference because the rest of the drive wasn't modified in any way.

2.8GB sounds a lot closer to what I'd expect depending on the exact model number, the operating system version, and whether you skipped the Alternate Root Partition.

About the only thing I can think of to explain your previous 7GB backup is that it may have still been indexing the guide data. I have no idea how many temporary files it uses during that procedure.

The partitions sound right. I only display the partition numbers for the Linux partitions because it scans the MFS partitions as one complete file system. On a typical Premiere that's 10-13.